Storm end road trip with loss to Sun

Percy Allen, The Seattle Times on Jul 9, 2025

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Through the first 19 games of the WNBA season, the Seattle Storm positioned themselves near the top of the league standings among a cluster of teams including Phoenix, New York and Atlanta who are chasing the runaway locomotive that is the Minnesota Lynx.

Seemingly, the Storm are poised to pull away from the pack during a scheduling quirk in which they don’t play an opponent with a winning record until Aug. 5 when the Lynx return to the Emerald City.

The Storm began this favorable 10-game stretch Wednesday morning with arguably their most perplexing performance of the season — a stunning 93-83 loss against the Connecticut Sun.

Granted, the Storm have dropped a handful of seemingly winnable games this season, including a pair of head-scratching losses against the expansion Golden State Valkyries.

But this was worse.

The last-place Sun (3-16) hadn’t won in over a month while plummeting to the bottom of the standings during a 10-game losing streak in which they were outscored by an average of 24.6 points in their past five games.

The Storm (12-8) soared into their rematch with Connecticut — they trounced the Sun 97-81 on June 27 — following impressive wins against Atlanta and New York to start their three-game road trip.

“On any given night in this league, anybody can get beat,” Storm coach Noelle Quinn said. “If you don’t have the correct mindset, energy, focus and discipline to execute from one quarter to the next to play a full 40-minute game, things like this are going to continue to happen.

“The inconsistency is at this point is very unacceptable.”

Playing their earliest game in franchise history, which began at 11 a.m. ET (8 a.m. in Seattle) in front of 7,984 at Mohegan Sun Arena, the Storm took control early and ran out of gas late.

Midway in the first quarter, Skylar Diggins was fouled while canning a fast-break 3-pointer and converted the ensuing free throw to put Seattle up 17-6.

Minutes later, Nneka Ogwumike drained a 3-pointer that gave the Storm their biggest lead at 27-13, and they went into halftime ahead 49-41.

Diggins converted another four-point play that put Seattle on top 74-66 at the end of the third period when everything changed.

“We just stopped playing basketball,” forward Gabby Williams said. “They kept playing and we stopped.”

Inexplicably, the Sun outscored the Storm 27-9 in the fourth.

Through three quarters, Seattle shot 50.9% on field goals, but in the fourth it converted 3 of 14 shots, including 0 for 6 on 3-pointers while committing six turnovers that led to 11 points.

Connecticut, which sank 10 of 17 field goals in the fourth, took its first lead at 79-77 when Tina Charles drained a midrange jumper over Ezi Magbegor with 5:36 left.

“I think the fourth quarter, we started to panic,” Williams said. “I will be the first one to say that we disrespected Connecticut today, and we got what we deserve. That’s a team with a Hall of Famer (in Charles). They’re professionals. They still can hoop and we disrespected them.

“I think we went, ‘OK, now we’re up. We can relax.’”

Down 82-81 with less than three minutes remaining, the Storm gave up an 11-0 run the decided their fate. Connecticut’s decisive spurt included Jacy Sheldon’s 3-pointer, Leila Lacan’s finger roll layup and two free throws and a pair of layups from Charles.

“We were bad defensively,” Quinn said. “Giving up 27 (points) is not good defense. … We weren’t covering ball screens well and at the end of the day, you can’t leave shooters open.

“Our defense always dictates what we do offensively. We were able to score at a high clip for three quarters, and that fourth quarter I just felt like our execution was awful.”

Charles led the way with a game-high 29 points on 11-for-22 shooting and 11 rebounds, while Sheldon had 16 points, Bria Hartley 15 and Saniya Rivers 11 for Connecticut, which shot 49.2% from the field and converted 8 of 18 3-pointers.

The Storm countered with a balanced offensive attack highlighted by Diggins (23 points and seven assists) and Williams (21 points and five rebounds).

Magbegor (13 points), Ogwumike (12) and Erica Wheeler also scored in double figures, while the reserves Alysha Clark, Zia Cooke and Dominique Malonga combined to tally just four points on 1-for-4 shooting.

The Storm return home and will face the Sun in a Friday rematch at Climate Pledge Arena.

“That’s the blessing about this league, is that you can play a team twice in a matter of 72 hours,” Ogwumike said. “So, us being able to sit on this and use it to see how we can turn things around on Friday, I think that’s actually the blessing in disguise on all of this.”

Quinn added: “Our mindset has to be different. We have to be prepared to play them way better than we did today.”

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